Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems

Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems, or J-UCAS, was the name for the joint U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force unmanned combat air vehicle procurement project. Originally two separate projects of the U.S. Air Force and Navy respectively: UCAV and UCAV-N; both programs merged in 2003. The two vehicles involved in J-UCAS were the Boeing X-45 and Northrop Grumman X-47A Pegasus, originally part of UCAV and UCAV-N respectively. J-UCAS was managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, it was stated that the J-UCAS program would be terminated and instead a new long-range strategic bomber program, Next-Generation Bomber, for the Air Force would launch. The program was revitalized into a Navy-only program named UCAS-D.

The goal of the J-UCAS effort was to develop a "versatile combat network in which air and ground components are nodes that can be changed over time to support a wide range of potential missions."

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